Output details

storm, rose, tiger : for chamber orchestra

Commissioned by the SCO

Fist Pperformances: SCO / Robin Ticciati: Edinburgh/Glasgow/Aberdeen 13-15/10/11

Revised and subsequently performed SCO / George Benjamin: St. Andrew’s/Glasgow/Edinburgh 24-27/04/13

In 'storm, rose, tiger', I wished to explore how the border between vertical and horizontal presentations of music might be blurred; how monody, homophony, heterophony, and polyphony could be shown to be part of a continuum rather than opposing textures; and how the visual idea of bringing an object in or out of focus might be applied to music.

Alongside this textural concern, I also sought to develop further the microtonal language of 'Candlebird' and 'To See the Dark Between'. The final section of 'storm, rose, tiger' uses the principle of a pivot chord to switch between microtonal modes, a single bass fifth allowing several possible transpositions of the mode above. In this way the bass and modal succession in the passacaglia are decoupled and appoggiatura-like harmonic effects are possible.

Microtonal performance techniques that are relatively straightforward for groups of soloists can cause practical problems for large string sections. In this piece I sought to balance the (illusory?) demands of a strict modal-harmonic system with a pragmatic approach to what will actually make an audible difference to the overall sound. In the first version of 'storm, rose, tiger', the passage from letter Z-end utilized a large number of passing quarter-tones in the string parts, with every pitch ‘correctly’ notated according to the prevailing mode. The result was unsatisfactory. In the revised version, I followed the practice of wind and brass players who will regularly use ‘out of tune’ fingerings in rapid passagework to simplify execution. Therefore, I restricted the string quarter-tones to prominent and/or sustained notes, allowing the passing notes to be ‘out of tune’ with respect to the modal background.